Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s PR man objects to a headline that appeared here on January 10: “Dunleavy claims salary study drafts have been tossed, so they are not public records.”

No records have been tossed, the Dunleavy word police told a public radio reporter. The draft copies have simply not been retained.

I have rewritten the headline to follow the edict from above: “Dunleavy claims salary study drafts have not been retained, so they are not public records.”

The denial to my public records request said in part: “The governor’s office received other, now superseded or obsolete drafts of the statewide salary study: those drafts are no longer public records because the governor’s office is not retaining and need not retain them for their informational value to or as evidence of the organization or operation of the governor’s office: the governor’s office no longer has an administrative need for them. The office of the governor has not received a preliminary or final report.”

Dunleavy PR man Jeff Turner, whose usual job is to say that Dunleavy has nothing to say, has yet to say what the governor did with the draft reports.

Perhaps Dunleavy’s office decided to kiss the drafts goodbye, bury them behind the governor’s mansion or leave them under the Ted Stevens bench at the Anchorage airport. They were not tossed.

Most likely the drafts went to the Department of Administration, which has yet to provide the draft copies of the study under another public records request.

The result is the same, however. For political purposes the Dunleavy administration claims that multiple drafts of a research report paid for with $1 million or more of public money are being kept secret.

The information is critical to understanding one of the crucial problems we face in Alaska—the inability to recruit and retain employees to perform state jobs in all aspects of government. The final study was supposed to have been finished last June, in time to be part of budget planning, but has been delayed now until late in the legislative session.

State law is clear that draft reports are public records, but generations of executive branch employees have spent their lives inventing excuses for secrecy. The law needs to be enforced, not ignored.

The 1990 amendment to state law includes draft reports as public documents.

Dunleavy wants Alaskans to believe there is no informational value in the draft reports so they are not public records. The assertion that the governor’s office “need not retain them for their informational value” is based on abysmal judgment about what information is valuable.

There are now more than 1,200 signatures on this petition calling for release of the research.

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